A Speck of Sand or Maybe a Star
by debbiechan
Summary: Canon timeline. Exploration of Orihime's feelings for Ichigo against the backdrop of the Tanabata myth. Spoilers for Arrancar arc. Sora and Orihime figure prominently. Ichigo, Tatsuki, Matsumoto, Rukia, Ishida make brief appearances.


**A Speck of Sand or Maybe a Star**

**By debbiechan**

_L'un rencontre souvent sa destinée en prenant le chemin pour l'éviter._

_French proverb_—"You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it."

1. _Tanabata wishes_

Orihime had never seen a cucumber until the day her preschool class made decorations for the Tanabata. Kasan never cooked, and the only vegetables Orihime had seen before were already cut up and soaked in sauce in heat-and-serve cups.

"What is this?" Orihime held up the beautiful dark green shape. It was shiny and slender and covered with tiny white spines. It smelled alien but fresh, like something from Paradise.

"It's_ suhyo_, stupid," said the older girl next to her. "You stick toothpicks into it and make a little cow. Here, let me show you."

Orihime didn't know anything about the Tanabata story or why everyone was making cows out of vegetables or why the teacher was pinning yellow paper stars on blue felt on the walls, but when time came to sing a song about the weaver princess, Orihime gasped.

"_MY_ name is Orihime," she announced to everyone. "My name is Orihime just like the weaver princess in the story!"

"A very pretty name," said the teacher.

"Your parents must be weird," said a student.

Orihime did suspect that her parents weren't like other people's. Kasan and Tousan yelled at one another a lot. Unlike parents on television shows, they were never present at the table at the same time for family dinners.

"Orihime?" asked the girl who went by the unextraordinary name of Momoko. "Are you going to grow up to marry a cow herder?"

Orihime was making her cucumber cow walk around her desk top on its spindly toothpick legs. A cow herder must be a kind and patient person. Tousan had called Kasan a slow and stupid cow many times. Didn't cow herders wear funny hats and fight with bad guys who wore feather headdresses in the Western movies? Cow herders must be amazing men.

"One day, of course," said Orihime. "I will marry someone amazing. That's the way my story goes. It has a happy ending."

That afternoon Orihime asked Nii-chan what he was going to be after he finished school, and Nii-chan mentioned many occupations Orihime didn't understand--accountant, bookkeeper, lawyer.

"Those sound boring," Orihime said. "You should be a cow-herder!"

He laughed. "Oh, your class is preparing for the Tanabata, isn't it? Why should I be a cow-herder? There are no cows in mid-city Tokyo."

"But cow-herders are amazing men." Orihime plopped next to her brother on the sofa and took the television remote from his hands. She changed the channel from the news to a kids show. "You are amazing, so you should herd cows."

"Ah, Orihime-chan. Amazing, am I?" His eyes looked suddenly serious. "I want to be the person you see. Thank you, Orihime-chan. I wish that someday I can live up to your expectations."

2. _Doodled in the stars_

The next year Orihime was in Kindergarten in a new school, and on the week of Tanabata the class held an important performance for the parents. Orihime's parents didn't come-- not that they had come the year before (their attendance at school events had been as rare as their presence together at the dinner table), but this year they did not live with Orihime and her brother.

"Places! Places!" The teacher clapped her hands and pressed a button on her little music-player. Lovely Okinawan sounds wafted across the playground, and all the little girls in their colorful yukata began a dance of stars across the universe.

Orihime mouthed a silent "yo!" at her brother in the audience. She danced, and he smiled at her.

He had saved her.

Orihime didn't remember it all exactly, but on a night that was a blur of pain and fear, her brother had swept her into his arms and carried her away to a new place to live. A tiny apartment that never smelled like what Tousan drank, that brownish stuff with the strong scent like rotting flowers. And Orihime no longer got little scabs in the shapes of crescent moons on her upper arms from Kasan grabbing her with those long nails. And there was an oven in the kitchen that actually worked! Nii-chan cooked stews in pots, and he said that one could put whatever one wanted in a stew as long as potatoes were there for the basic flavor.

Orihime didn't know exactly what her brother had saved her from, but she understood that he had saved her. She felt at peace in her new apartment and excited about putting as many different ingredients into the potato stew as she could find in the refrigerator. Burdock, taro, a yummy big onion called a leek. And every night, her brother chopped real vegetables with a fat blade and let her scrape the pieces from the chopping block into the pot. And every night, she and her brother sat together at the table and gave thanks for their lives and their happiness.

"Good job! Good job!" The teacher was applauding the little stars who had danced to form the Milky Way.

Orihime bowed, and the paper star on her head fell off. She picked it up and ran to join her brother in the audience. It was now time for the Kindergarten boys to do their dance of the kappa spirits in the river. It was a dance that had something to do with the Bon festival, but Orihime still got the Tanabata and the Bon confused; she knew that they were connected somehow, sometimes by stars, maybe by a river, always by people being happy and hoping for good things to come.

"What are you going to wish for this Tanabata?" her brother asked.

"Shh, you're not supposed to ask!'

"I want to know," said Nii-chan as the music played and little boys jumped around on the grass pretending to be river spirits. "I want to know what my Orihime-chan needs to be perfectly happy."

"I _am_ perfectly happy," Orihime said, but as the celebration went on, she took out a pencil and wrote some things on her paper star that she might like to copy later on the multi-colored strips of paper that would hang on the bamboo tree:

_Wishes_

_By Inoue Orihime_

_Nii-chan's happiness_

_Mackerel _(Orihime didn't know how to spell this so she drew a picture of a fish)

_Socks with tigers _(Again, a picture)

_No more sickness, only happiness_

_Adventure and fun _(These words were not only hard to spell but were difficult concepts to explain so Orihime drew a picture of a pirate ship with a skull and crossbones flag shooting giant cannonballs across the ocean at a robot who was firing back long and sparkly missiles)

When the time came to write wishes on the colored strips, Orihime forgot her star and scribbled other words for the bamboo tree--remembering only her wish for mackerel. Later that evening, when she and her brother were having dinner, he pulled out the little yellow paper she had worn on her head for the star dance.

"I have Orihime's wishes!" he sang.

"You can't read them!" Orihime exclaimed. "They won't come true if you read them!"

"Nah, you're Orihime. Your destiny is already written in the stars! Look!" He held up the little paper star. "Written all over it." He did a double-take. "Doodled in the stars actually. What's the little skeleton doing on the boat there?"

"That's a pirate flag. Don't you know anything?" With her chopsticks, Orihime lifted a big piece of fish out of her stew. One of her wishes had already come true. How about that? She had wished for mackerel only this afternoon and by dinnertime, her brother….

Orihime narrowed her eyes. "Hey, you're sneaky."

"Me?" Nii-chan chewed his potato stew with all the day's marvelous ingredients. One night Orihime had put jelly beans in the stew, and he had called them a "brilliant choice, better than duck sauce." This evening he chewed, and his eyes smiled, and he held the yellow paper star with Orihime's wishes between his fingers.

"Your art and spelling are amazing, Orihime-chan," he said. "You're such a clever and beautiful little girl."

Orihime could not imagine a more wonderful person on the face of the planet than her brother at that moment.

Nii-chan could make the kappa spirits turn into fish that would jump into potato stews, and Nii-chan could make pirate ships fly into the heavens where the king of the robots would assign everyone a star and say, _"Here, eat your fish and write all your most secret wishes on the stars."_

And Nii-chan, being the sneaky wonderful person he is, would steal all the stars from the robot king and find a way to make the pirates' wishes come true. And the pirates would be reformed and take down their skull and crossbones flag and raise one with a dancing panda.

Orihime sighed with happiness over her steaming delicious dinner. She was going to have a wonderful life.

3. _Crash in her heart_

Being grown-up was where it was at. Being a child was stupid. Being a child was unseemly. Being a child was SO last year.

That was the attitude of the girls in Orihime's middle school class. No one wanted to be mistaken for a primary schooler. No one would be caught DEAD humming festival songs or writing a wish on a piece of colored paper for the Tanabata tree.

Orihime wanted to grow up, to meet her destiny and be liked by everyone, but it was confusing when her heart still wanted to do childish things. She wanted to spin in circles when the sun was shining brightly. Her classmates laughed.

They laughed about things she couldn't help too--like the color of her hair. They were always saying it was "too glamorous" "too grown-up" or "the color of your grandmother's tea." It was all very confusing.

What was clear was the rage from the girls who pushed her down and cut her hair with big shiny shears that looked like gardening tools. Orihime remembered rage like that. Long long ago she had seen it in her mother's eyes. Blind and senseless rage. She remembered being knocked down. She remembered asking Kasan "why?" but this time she didn't ask.

The attack itself wasn't so bad but after, looking at herself in the mirror, Orihime felt shame. She looked like such a baby. What could she possibly have done to provoke them? She acted so immature, and now she looked as childish as she acted. Her hair had not been this short since she drew with crayons.

Her brother tried to help. "You can pull the hair away from your face with these," he said, offering her the hairpins. "Very stylish. Very French."

"You don't understand!" Orihime shouted. "Those are what little kids wear. You still treat me like a little kid. Stop it. Some things are just none of your business!"

And there was nothing to say after that. Dinner was eaten in silence. Brother and sister went to bed in their respective futons in the same room, and Orihime made sure she faced away from her brother all night. She slept little, staring at the wall. In the morning she got dressed for school even though she was not planning to go there, and she didn't say goodbye when her brother left for work.

M_aybe I'll never go to school again_, thought Orihime in the very quiet apartment. _I'll just tell Nii-chan to tell the teacher I died._

She felt the crash in her heart before she heard it on the street.

After that, everything was a blur of pain and fear just like it had been on the night Nii-chan had carried her away, only this time she was carrying _him, _dragging his body over the pavement. She held one of his arms over her shoulders and could lift him no higher than his knees, and his head drooped and shook red drops of blood over her clothes as she dragged him.

The lady on the sidewalk shouted that she had already called an ambulance, but no one tried to stop Orihime. A little boy ran to ask, "Where are you going? Where are you taking him?"

"A clinic." Orihime's voice was breathless. "There's a clinic." She had to get him to the clinic near Tatsuki-chan's house. Tatsuki-chan had described it perfectly. _The best medical clinic in all Karakura Town,_ Tatsuki-chan had said. Orihime was going to save her brother just as he had saved her.

There had been blood that long ago night too. A bottle had been thrown. Pieces of glass had flown against Orihime's skirt and legs, cutting her knees. The brown drink spattered on the walls. _Take her. I don't care._ Kasan's slurred voice. Orihime remembered and felt no horror. Horrible? How could anything be horrible if Nii-chan was with her?

Nii-chan was still breathing, his hair dripping warm blood.

F_ine, fine, everything will be fine_, Orihime told herself. She was running away from her parents' house, from the smell of rotting flowers, from a darker destiny.

_Don't leave me, Nii-chan_, her heart sobbed as she rounded the corner to Tatsuki's street. _Don't leave, don't leave me alone._ But her eyes were without tears, and she held her mouth in a tight, resolute line.

The boy who answered the door looked sleepy, and his hair was sticking out in all directions. His hair was the most unusual color Orihime had ever seen. A kind of golden orange like a sunrise. Punks dyed their hair orange, but this guy had eyes too mild to be a punk and besides, he was wearing a uniform from Orihime's school, and he worked in a medical clinic. He had to be a very nice guy.

"We're not open yet." He rubbed his eyes and put his keys back in his pocket before even looking at her. "Shit! Did you--? Here--let me--"

The boy took Orihime's brother from her back. "Did you carry him here yourself?"

"He was hit by a car," Orihime said in a calm voice. She was out of breath but her words were steady. "His head is bleeding but there doesn't look like there's any other part of him … _hurt_. He was lying unconscious on the street when I found him."

The boy called the doctor. The doctor called an ambulance. When a tiny girl wearing a strawberry hairclip opened the clinic windows and the early morning sun poured in, Orihime saw that her brother's face was whiter than white.

The room she had walked into was her destiny. An unforeseen destiny, first year middle school. The voices were kind. The light was tender. The tiny girl's hair was a pretty golden color in that light. The boy who was Orihime's age had buttoned his shirt and put on his jacket already, but his hair still looked slept-on. It looked like hair no comb could take down.

And Nii-chan was dead. He had died sometime after Orihime had shouldered him off to the boy. Orihime had not felt Nii-chan's going away, but all she knew now was that there was no going back to their life together.

Her childhood was gone. Her safety was gone. Her brother was dead.

Orihime felt no pain yet, no sense of loss, but Destiny had arrived. It was flooding softly through the windows with the sunbeams.

4. _A dream and a new purpose_

Three years later, the boy who had answered the clinic door was in Inoue Orihime's high school class. His name was Ichigo Kurosaki, and he was the main reason Orihime hadn't taken her grandmother up on an offer to come live at the old Inoue homestead in Takamatsu. Not that the boy was the center of her life--Tatsuki-chan, Orihime's friends, a sense of familiarity, and a desire for independence were other important reasons Orihime chose to live alone in Karakura Town (on unreliable checks from relatives every month). But when Orihime was honest with herself, the truth was that she _needed_ to be near the boy who had spoken the first kind words to her when her world had fallen apart.

"Is there someone I can call?" Ichigo Kurosaki had said to the stunned girl when her brother had died. When Orihime shook her head no, he told her to please sit down, that she could stay in the clinic as long as she wanted.

She had wanted to get to know the boy better, but he never ended up in any of her classes.

For three years, Orihime had lit incense and prayed for her brother's soul and wished deep in her heart that the next morning she would pass Kurosaki-kun in the hallway. On the mornings that she _did_ pass Kurosaki-kun in the hall, she was glad to know that the Buddhist saying about even the wishes of an ant reaching heaven was true.

Many of the first year students at Karakura High were scared of Kurosaki-kun because he was a punk street-fighter who hung out with a giant Mexican thug, but Orihime knew better. Her best friend, Tatsuki, knew Kurosaki-kun well and always told stories about what a good family boy he was. Even without Tatsuki stories, Orihime would've known the truth because of that morning in the clinic when Nii-chan died.

"Ichigo pretends to be an ass," Tatsuki said. "It's some stupid thing boys do. It's called cultivating an image."

The fact that Kurosaki-kun pretended to be grumpy when Orihime knew him to be kind made it easy to like him. Such a funny boy. Orihime would smile at the idea that she knew something others didn't. As the weather grew warmer, she began to look forward to fireworks, octopus balls, and wishing on stars. She smiled a lot in first year high school, and the pain of her brother's absence felt muted.

Then came the dream.

Orihime didn't know exactly what Kurosaki-kun had saved her from in the dream, but she understood that he had saved her.

Then it became clear that Nii-chan was in the dream too, and Orihime would sit straight up in bed some nights with her heart pounding because her brother's eyes in the dream frightened her.

The night that she dreamed the dream all the way through she understood that her brother was saved too. Somehow Kurosaki Ichigo had saved her, and in the end it had been Kurosaki-kun's amazing ability to cleanse souls that had saved her brother.

The next morning she told Tatsuki the dream, and what did you know! Tatsuki had had the same dream! Orihime was ready to believe in another dimension where best friends shared their dreams, but Tatsuki put two and two together and said that it was like something or someone had tried to erase their memory of an event. She said that Kurosaki-kun was up to something; she didn't know what, but she would find out one day.

Tatsuki didn't find out, but Orihime did.

It was like stepping into a room called Destiny again, only this time there was no anticipation of sadness and loss. There were strange events, one after another, that made life exciting….

And brought Kurosaki-kun closer to her.

Summer came and with it a new sense of self and purpose. Orihime forgot to make a wish for the Tanabata, but it seemed like her long-ago wishes for adventure and fun were already coming true. Life felt charged with new possibilities. In a blur of joy and that feeling one gets when eating ice-cream too fast and the cold fills your ears and sinus passages with stinging delight, the days were carrying her towards a fate even Nii-chan could not have foreseen.

"Yes," she said to her emerging powers, "I _will_ learn to use you."

"Yes," she said to Urahara-san, "I will take your challenge and train to go to Soul Society."

"Yes," she said to Sado-kun over the telephone, "let's go train at the warehouse tonight. I can't wait!"

"Yes," she said to Yoruichi-san, "I know the reason why I fight. I fight because I want to help Kurosaki-kun."

And Orihime decided to commemorate the change in herself with a change in hair style.

When the rageful girls in middle school had chopped off her hair, she had trimmed it short to make it presentable but she'd hated it that way. When Tatsuki protected her from bullies, Orihime had grown her hair long again. Orihime's hair told a lot about herself. Her new hairstyle needed to make better use of the hairpins she once wore to remember her brother but now wore with pride in herself as well.

She had already told every single person in school at least ten times that her brother had given them to her, and she never forgot how she told Kurosaki-kun in the hallway: "Oh ha ha, I scratch my head a lot, but you know, my hairpins never fall out, isn't that funny? Aren't these pins a pretty blue? My brother gave them to me." The purpose of hairpins was to hold back hair, so maybe if her wonderful pins had more hair to grasp…?

Y_es_, thought Orihime, _he will see me and my pretty pins in a new way and know that my powers were gained for his sake._

As the time to leave for Soul Society came closer and the days lengthened, Orihime's bangs lengthened too, and she tucked them behind her ears, behind her hairpins and the source of her new secret power, and she thought that her new prominent forehead made her look more mature.

"You're wearing your hair different," Tatsuki noted on the banks of the Onose River.

Would Kurosaki-kun notice? Maybe boys didn't notice hair, but she wanted to show him how strong she'd become and all because of him.

It was festival time, and the buzz of crowds could be heard from far away. Night had not fully arrived even though everyone was impatient for fireworks. The first stars were visible against what looked like blue felt on the sky.

"What's with that face, Tatsuki-chan?" Orihime wanted everyone to be happy, and didn't like it when her friend looked worried. She smiled in the hope that Tatsuki would smile with her.

T_here is so much to hope for._

Orihime stretched out her arms and felt her emotions become legendary, felt them flow across the distance of the Milky Way and reach for Kurosaki-kun.

5. _Not connecting_

Orihime was in Soul Society for three whole weeks.

After coming back to Earth, she wondered if maybe she'd gotten someone else's destiny by mistake.

"Everything was more amazing than I even imagined it would be," she told her brother's photograph, "but…."

There were some things she wasn't sure she could tell even Nii-chan. Things about Kurosaki-kun. Were girls supposed to talk to their brothers about boys they liked?

"There were moments when I felt high in the sky but …."

Orihime wondered if she could describe the moment when she was _literally_ high in sky. It was a spectacular feeling after the spirit ball exploded and everyone was floating in midair. Orihime had mustered all the emotion in her heavenly body and shouted "Kurosaki-kun!" as she reached for him, and he too had called "Inoue!" but ….

Nii-chan's black and white photograph wore the same pleasant expression it always did.

"Something didn't connect," Orihime said softly, and she knew that she wasn't connecting with her brother either. She really needed to talk to a woman about these matters but ….

For the first time in her life Orihime missed not having a mother.

Orihime and Kurosaki-kun's fingers had just missed, and they had landed, separated for days, in the Seireitei. And then after the rescue of Kuchiki-san, there was so much other excitement and the 11th division wanted her to play football against Renji-san's team and of course the 4th division needed help with sports injuries and ….

"Now that we're home, he still seems so far away…" Orihime breathed a small sigh. "Maybe it's just me, but I don't think Kurosaki-kun is himself."

She had listened to his voice as he chatted with classmates in the hallway, and his same gruff retorts and same simple kindness had been there. But once, just before Algebra, she caught his glance; she had searched his eyes and sensed an absence in them.

Orihime's voice got quieter. "I wish," she said, well aware that her wish was the one she had made long before the Soul Society adventure, "that I could get closer to Kurosaki-kun and help."

She went to bed that night feeling a sense of disquiet that would soon grow into full-fledged dread. There came a battle that hurt everyone's spirit and made Kurosaki-kun so depressed that not only Orihime but the whole school noticed. Kurosaki-kun was a slump-shouldered, mumbling mess after that battle.

Two Arrancar arrived, a small green-eyed one and a giant one who destroyed Tatsuki's entire karate class with one breath. Kurosaki-kun hadn't arrived on the scene yet, and Orihime stood alone. Sado-kun's arm had been torn off like a doll's. The air smelled of blood, and Orihime, recognizing that this was her moment, her chance to truly help, stood and faced the intruders with Kurosaki-kun's image in her mind.

I _don't know what is troubling Kurosaki-kun but if I fend off these two then he can have a little peace of mind. That's probably the best I can do for Kurosaki-kun._

She fired her offensive weapon, but Tsubaki was smashed into pieces like specks of dust.

That wasn't even the worst part; the worst part was that when Kurosaki-kun finally came, his reiatsu felt dark and dangerous. The horrible black aura finally left, and when the battle was over, what was still frightening was how upset Kurosaki-kun was over not having been able to protect anyone.

He wouldn't speak to anyone at school until ….

"You can stop worrying," Orihime said to her brother's picture one evening. "Remember how I told you how moody Kurosaki-kun has been? He's all fine now. Kuchiki-san came back from Soul Society and she knew just how to cheer him!"

Orihime hugged her arm which was still in a cast after the terrible battle. She knew that her happiness sounded fake. The truth was that she sincerely was happy that Kurosaki-kun was back to his courageous and strong old self, but there was something else she wasn't happy about.

At a moment when Orihime should have been ecstatic, when Kurosaki-kun came to her and announced that he would protect her against all the terrors that were threatening Karakura Town, Orihime had felt a ripple of discontent because it was Kuchiki-san who had dragged him there to make the promise.

"After all, Kuchiki-san is incredible," Orihime told her brother. She didn't know what else to say. It was as if another girl's virtues and not Orihime's had made Kurosaki-kun speak those beautiful words.

Moonlight streamed into the room in the slanted diamond shapes of the window panes, and Nii-chan only smiled.

I_s there something wrong with me?_ Orihime wondered.

Orihime told her brother's picture about being "a little jealous" about Kuchiki-san, but there was no relief in the confession.

J_ealousy_--surely there was another name for what she was feeling.

It occurred to Orihime that maybe she was lonely. She wondered how it could be that a person who was well-liked and had many friends at school could feel lonely. She really hadn't felt lonely in Soul Society--it was only later, after the coming back to Earth, after realizing that her dreams of fighting alongside and protecting Kurosaki-kun hadn't quite come true that she'd felt this way. As her admiration and feelings of tenderness towards Kurosaki-kun had grown, so had this feeling of wanting to be closer to him.

But why was it that Orihime's exuberance and delight for all things great and small in the world feel like it was crumpling?

I _don't like fried eggs,_ Orihime thought later that night as she brushed her hair. _I don't like gummy candies that look like fried eggs… what else? I don't like sweaters that are too purple and sometimes I don't like… __**me.**_She gave her hair one last fierce punishing stroke and sighed loudly._ A girl who dislikes herself--is she worthy of being loved? Is a girl who thinks such thoughts obsessed with herself or is she just hungry and does she need tofu-chocolate mochi at midnight to help her sleep? Is this what liking a boy is supposed to be like? Nobody told me it makes you feel dreadful half the time…._

Orihime put down the brush and was about to undress for bed when there was a knock at the door. And so it was that Orihime was miraculously given a chance to talk to a woman about matters of the heart. Matsumoto Rangiku invited herself into the apartment and jumped into Orihime's bathtub. When Orihime told in frantic phrases about how Kuchiki-san had helped Kurosaki-kun and the tears began to fall, Rangiku appeared in the hallway in a cloud of soap bubbles. Eyes narrowed, chin up, Rangiku-san looked like a stern goddess ready to spout advice.

Instead she tickled Orihime and nearly scared her to death.

Orihime was vividly aware that this wet naked body trying to comfort her was a blessing of sorts, but she blushed at the intimacy of the moment. Later, when the words of wisdom and advice came, Orihime wasn't quite sure if this beautiful death goddess with hundreds of years of experience knew what she was talking about (Truly, how could she know the depth of Orihime's self-doubt?) Still, after being hugged by Rangiku-san and told that it was brave to confront one's feelings of jealousy, Orihime felt a little better, ate some seaweed ice-cream and tried very hard to be cheery but ….

L_ook at Rangiku-san_, thought Orihime. _How can I ever be as confident as she is?_

Orihime instinctively knew it was a bad habit to compare herself to others, but she did it anyway.

On the battlefield, she had seen Ishida-kun's amazing prowess with the spirit bow and wondered if she hadn't trained hard enough and that's why she wasn't able to fight. After the return to Earth, she had seen Kuchiki-san's amazing ability to bring Kurosaki-kun back from depression, and why was it that Kuchiki-san could make him smile like that? Did she have a connection to him that Orihime didn't, or was Orihime lacking in some essential womanly skill?

Doubt, doubt, and more self-doubt ate away at Orihime's dream of becoming the one who fought by Kurosaki-kun's side and always brought him happiness.

And then, on this same night that Rangiku-san praised Orihime for confronting her fears, Orihime saw something that made her turn away, shut her eyes and want to bury her fears away. If she only could. If she could only dig a grave for those fears, pile mounds and mounds of dirt on them and then hit the dirt repeatedly with her shovel! Sometimes Orihime despised her own imagination. A wound was simple to heal because an injury that had already occurred in the past was easy to reject, but what about the great unknowns of the future?

There came another terrible battle, and Orihime was rejecting a terrible wound Kuchiki-san had taken from the enemy. The fallen girl was enclosed in a golden sphere, covered with Orihime's wishing away her damage and pain.

Orihime saw Kurosaki-kun looking at Kuchiki-san as if she were the Sleeping Beauty and he the Prince. His eyes were so full of longing, sadness over not having protected her, and something else glistened in them that was not tears--

N_o. _

N_o, no._

There was no way to easily escape the smell of rotting flowers this time.

This time the bitter battle concluded with people feeling hopeful instead of despondent. The urgency of war was in the air, and everyone ran off to train with the sense of purpose that Orihime had lost. She felt adrift and moving towards no specific goal. She had never been less sure of who she was and what her role in this life was supposed to be. And when Urahara-san told her that she was not needed on the battlefield ("A warrior who has lost his strength," he said, each word its own poison, "will only get in the way"), Orihime wanted to wish away her own wish to have a wonderful life.

I_t's hope,_ she thought, running through the lonely world in tears. _It's hope that makes me feel disappointed. If I didn't have this hope then I could just forget about my dreams and be satisfied._

Satisfied being lonely.

Satisfied being weak and powerless.

Satisfied watching Kurosaki-kun's back in a battle and never getting closer.

Orihime ran through the lonely world smack into Kuchiki-san who gasped, "Inoue!" and asked her why she was crying.

Kuchiki-san of all people! Orihime wanted to be like her! Just standing next to her, Orihime felt so unwieldy and graceless and full of ugly desires.

Kuchiki-san was so sweet and concerned. She cursed Urahara for his words and cupped Orihime's face and reminded her of her part in the rescue in Soul Society. She told Orihime that the only useless warriors were the ones who lacked resolve.

Hacchi-san said something similar later, but it was more difficult to understand. Something about making things the way she wanted them to be. The words seemed more complicated by the fact that they were spoken by a giant with pink hair, and Orihime only nodded politely and pretended to get his meaning. In any event, with Hacchi's advice, and Kuchiki-san's offer to go train with her in Soul Society, Orihime vowed to become a better person, one worthy of taking her place at the front lines in the war to come.

N_ow I'm going to go and not look back…._

For what seemed like time outside of the pull of fate and the anxieties that belonged to the world of the living, Orihime enjoyed running up and down vast unpopulated areas outside the Seireitei with Kuchiki-san following, hurling kidou balls of fire. Even as Orihime would stop, drop to her knees and fire Tsubaki over her shoulder back at Kuchiki-san, she felt no rivalry with the girl. This type of fighting was fun; it was playing; even Orihime's fearlessness felt like a game, but maybe when the time came to display true courage, the real thing would have taken root in her nature?

"My brother wouldn't approve," said Kuchiki-san once when the girls were bathing in hot springs after a day's strenuous training. "Nii-sama wanted us to train closer to the Kuchiki home, but I didn't want to risk getting close to the gardens and destroying some ancient maple with a fireball gone off its mark." Her wet hair looked blacker than ever behind clouds of steam. "He'd call these springs a hole for commoners but I think they're nicer than the bathhouse on the property. If you came to visit, you would have a room and a personal bath. You will be waited on by servants."

"Oh no," Orihime protested. "The barracks of the 13th Division are fine."

"I would like you to see my brother in a proper setting," Kuchiki-san said. "He is amazing. Maybe we will go to the house one afternoon for tea."

Kuchiki-san's fondness for her brother reminded Orihime of her own, and sometimes she felt that she and Kuchiki-san were more alike than different but that was only sometimes. Kuchiki-san spoke of being a street rat in the Rukongai and how Renji-kun wanted a better life for them inside the Seireitei where he'd heard you didn't have to steal food.

"Renji's motive for becoming a death god came from his stomach," Kuchiki-san said, smiling, "but he brought the both of us out of this dusty terrible place to where we could rise to our better selves."

D_on't look back._

Orihime remembered the heat-and-serve cup of shrimp and noodles placed on the table every evening by Kasan and wanted to remember more about that time. There had been that bad flowery smell and that dreary sense that Kasan and Tousan didn't care. But there had always been food even if it was heat-and-serve…. Orihime resisted comparing her family home to whatever horrors Kuchiki-san left when she joined the Shinigami Academy, but Orihime so desperately wanted to rise to her better self.

M_aybe when I die I can become a shinigami like Kuchiki-san and Kurosaki-kun! _

She had never thought much about dying, but she had never been afraid of the idea. She was only a little afraid that she would not be able to accomplish much as a human fighter with her limited powers.

D_on't think about dying, silly_, she thought to herself in a world full of spirits of the dead. _I'm sure that warriors aren't supposed to think about such things. Not if they want to go to battle feeling like they can't be taken down! Think about flags waving and trumpets playing! Think about brave knights and shiny armor and …._

She and Kuchiki-san never spoke of Kurosaki-kun. Maybe Kuchiki-san didn't think of him because she was so concentrated on her training, but it struck Orihime as odd that his name never came up.

The unspoken seemed to hang over Orihime like the waxing moon in the sky over Soul Society those weeks. It was just there, a slowly growing inspiration. She never said it aloud, but the reason she wanted to get stronger was so that she could fight alongside Kurosaki-kun.

She tried not to think about him, though, when exchanging fire with Kuchiki-san and practicing her offensive technique. Tried not to think about Kurosaki-kun the same way she tried not to think about Death.

The war was supposed to begin weeks later in the winter, but for some reason an alarm was sounded one afternoon in the middle of a training session. Captain Ukitake became suddenly unlike his usual pleasant self and started shouting commands, so Orihime believed that the war was truly starting, and Kuchiki-san said she would go ahead and wait for Orihime but….

Orihime didn't see her again.

Everything was not supposed to have ended so quickly.

Orihime's brother had died at the still youthful age of twenty-seven, and Orihime had always imagined living long past that. She had, in fact, imagined being very old and losing all her teeth and having to be fitted with solid gold dentures.

Life was supposed to have been long and the ending was supposed to have been happy. An amazing man was to have played a major role and so too would have many food and flavor combinations.

The green-eyed Arrancar, though, signaled the end of Orihime's life when he said that there was no negotiation, that he was going to kill her friends unless she came with him. It didn't matter where they were going to go--Orihime understood that she would be leaving Earth forever.

Orihime hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat--_I can resist, there is another way._

Then the green-eyed Arrancar said in a quiet, confident voice that allowed for no other reality, "Come with me, woman."

She wasn't afraid. She was even grateful. She was somehow being useful and saving her friends' lives this way.

And when in a surprising turn, the Arrancar gave her twelve hours to get her affairs in order and say goodbye to one person and only one person, Orihime felt her soul fill up with gratitude for each second of her life thus far.

T_welve hours, fifteen years. I suppose I could do the math to allot how much time I should spend remembering each year of my life but … I think I'll just go live life a little bit longer in Karakura Town._

Orihime went to the Onose river and counted her blessings along with red dragonflies. It was the height of the dragonfly season, not too cold yet, and a perfect time to be satisfied with one's failings and to say goodbye to life's struggles. The dragonflies had only weeks to live themselves.

Hours passed, it seemed, in the intake of a single breath. Was that how ephemeral life was too? Orihime was glad she had paused by the river to give thanks for it.

And the person to say goodbye to had to be none other than one special boy. Orihime wanted to consecrate the moment--she could be bold because she was never going to see him again. Grateful for this opportunity, feeling she would be a fool to pass it by, she leaned over his sleeping figure, grasped his hand, and bowed her head to kiss his face.

Closer, closer.

Orihime's face burned from being so close and her lips hovered a moment over his but…

"I can't," she whispered and moved away, tears falling.

Again, no connection, or at least not the kind she truly wanted, because her hand still held his, and a tear landed on his cheek.

If she had kissed him sleeping there, would it have made a difference? A true connection?

Orihime made her peace with the moment. If there was no connection, there was no loss either. Her longing stayed unchanged in her heart. She would leave with the enemy without ever having fulfilled her dream in life, but she would take her longing with her.

"Goodbye, Kurosaki-kun."

6. _The lust_

The end was not the end.

Every scene in Hueco Mundo was swiftly connected to another, and while Orihime felt she did have moments here and there to reflect, it felt like connecting the dots on a page in a child's workbook. There was no telling what the final picture would be.

Everything was happening so fast.

Each moment a horror but also an illumination. Stars, stars, stars in a vast sky. Somehow connected.

This time she was not separated from Kurosaki-kun, not at all. He had come to save her. He had come for her. Orihime saw him close up--bleeding, bones snapping, the true face of a warrior.

Or what was his true face? Orihime saw his mask with the skeletal teeth and it reminded her of her brother's lost soul. They were in the land of lost souls and so close to being lost themselves.

Orihime could sense that here there was something more terrible than even physical pain or death. What could that be? All the Hollow souls were full of terrible, aching longing--was there any pain worse than Hollow desire?

When she called out to Kurosaki-kun, "Please don't get hurt anymore," he turned around to look at her, and she felt her heart brush against his--a connection! Later when explaining the heart to the green-eyed Arrancar she now knew as Ulquiorra, she felt that his questions helped her define her own heart. The connections were what made humans matter to one another. She needed connections; her strength was that her heart was close to not only Kurosaki-kun but to all her friends who had come to hurt and bleed for her--

Oh, her friends, her friends, her wonderful friends to whom she would leave her heart if she died. Sado-kun cut down by a scythe. Kuchiki-san's body held high on a trident. Ishida-kun and Renji-san tortured--organs burst and tendons sliced. She would do the same for them. She had wanted to do the same ….

She knew that the wish she had scribbled on a piece of paper for the Tanabata years ago was a childish one: _No more sickness, only happiness. _And that wish had been made in world of the living. Here in the land of the Hollow, where the dead fed on the dead and Aizen's army prepared for the destruction of Orihime's home world, Orihime made another wish--she felt it was futile as soon as she made it but what else could she do?

I _don't want anyone to get hurt anymore. No more hurt. _

There was more hurt.

Ishida-kun's body impaled by Kurosaki-kun's sword flew through the air. Orihime screamed, and then her heart went cold. The Hollow-like being with a hole in its chest and no heart there seemed to notice her. The killer Kurosaki-kun had become spoke in Kurosaki-kun's true voice saying, "Help… must help you."

I_t's my fault. Because I cried out to him to help me. _She shut her eyes tight._ I came here to protect him. I trained because I didn't want to be a burden to him. Why in the end did I come to depend on him?_

She was about to summon her healing powers when Kurosaki-kun aimed a fireball at Ishida-kun.

"Wait! Kurosaki-kun! Wait!"

He didn't listen to her screams this time. He was going to kill Ishida-kun. Stars flashed before Orihime's eyes, as if she were getting faint but she felt charged with fear. Before she could step forward, Ulquiorra rose and stopped Kurosaki-kun, sent him careening through space along with an energy blast shaped like a sick and swollen intestine. The sky thundered and flared, and there was a colorless explosion inside Orihime's head. This time, after all the times she had witnessed Kurosaki-kun near death, Orihime was sure he had been killed.

This end was not the end either. Kurosaki-kun was alive, no longer a Hollow. Ulquiorra had saved Ishida-kun, maybe all of them from that blast Kurosaki-kun had been about to fire, and before Orihime could say or do anything else, there was arguing about the next battle--male voices shouting about what was fair and what was a victory.

T_hey're alike._

In the bright stunning moments that followed, in the confusion that brought clarity, in the lurch of grief that filled her with compassion, Orihime understood that Ulquiorra was not only like Kurosaki-kun but like herself. He wanted to connect.

In his dying moment he stretched out his arm and reached for her.

She ran towards him, but her fingers clasped air.

The aftermath was long and silent, a river of something more terrible than pain or death. The horrible, aching longing. The lust, the lonely need.

And wanting something badly didn't make it so.

7. _Source of light_

Orihime couldn't stop crying. She was ashamed of her tears because the intermittent noise of her hiccupping sobs kept breaking the solemnity of the scene, and her distress just made the looks on the boys' faces worse. They should not feel for her, she thought. They had fought bravely and she had done nothing but cry--well, she could help Ishida-kun now. Through the fog of tears and the glow of her healing shield, she could barely make out his expression, but his concern for her as he lay there was as plain as the hole in his gut and the dark red staining his white clothes. And his concern for her was like a sword in her own body.

Kurosaki-kun flew off to another fight, and Orihime would not be comforted by the friend whose presence usually brought her contentment and well-being.

"Inoue-san," Ishida-kun began, "please don't--"

"Sssh, sssh." She hushed him in a tone louder than necessary, but she was angry with herself not him. "I'll stop crying. Please don't say anything. Please."

He didn't speak anymore.

How weak was her will that it took her a long time after she said she would to settle her sobs?

I_'m useless_, she thought, even though her heart felt the burden of other things to mourn.

She heard Aizen's voice echo in her mind: _The woman is useless to me now. You can come get her if you like._

Urahara's voice: _A warrior without offensive power will only get in the way._

Kasan's voice as she stepped over Orihime who preferred to crawl rather than walk because crawling was faster and walking was still so new: _Get out of my way, stupid useless baby. Get out of my way!_

Orihime stared at her hands and the golden glow they suspended over a mangled body. She watched the lie about her uselessness fade as Ishida-kun's wound closed up and his missing hand was restored. She could heal the injured--this much she had done in this war and this much she could still do. The lie vanished, but some sickness inside Orihime remained. Healing Ishida-kun, Orihime became aware that only _she_ could heal herself.

Here in this desolate world Orihime's pains had been unburied, brought to the surface and laid out like tumors to spill their infested contents: _My mother doesn't love me, people die, I couldn't save Ulquiorra, they pushed me down, they called me names, my mother and father beat me, I couldn't save Kurosaki-kun, I'm not good enough, I can't connect, I have to keep quiet or I'll get hurt, everyone was hurt because of me, I wanted Kurosaki-kun to save me, I ran away from myself, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know … I don't know who I really am._

Ishida-kun was sitting up. He was holding his restored hand in the palm of the other and looking at her with an expression of awe.

"I had no idea …." His voice was breathless. Why was he so shocked? "Your powers are…."

She didn't know what her powers were. She looked past Ishida-kun, at the landscape wrecked by war. It was dark on the dome--Aizen's fake sky and insipid light didn't reach here. The only light came from the strange moon, and the rest of the night was starless. Something, though, among the ruined towers reflected a spark--then again, it flashed twice more, a white dot coming and going. The spark caught Orihime's eye and she found herself staring at the place for the light to flash again but it didn't.

A piece of glass? Her own imagination knew no limits. Anything could give off a glimmer of hope in graveyard. A speck of sand or maybe a star.

"Inoue-san, are you all right?"

His voice pulled her to reality. She was doing it again. She was looking for a wishing star on the far horizon when the true source of light was inside herself.

Orihime put her hand on her heart and closed her eyes.

W_hat's done is done. I'm so sorry, Kurosaki-kun. I didn't want to let you out of my sight. Keeping you in my sight I couldn't see anything else. Not even my own heart, my own strength._

M_aybe now, maybe because I need to, I will learn to see._

I_'m sorry, Kurosaki-kun. I didn't know what you wanted or needed, and I wanted to help so I could be important to you. I was walking in the dark and wishing on stars. I didn't know …._

How could anyone know the depths of another person's pain?

Nii-chan was always smiling when he and Orihime still lived at home with their parents, and his pain must have been far beyond Orihime's childish understanding. When Orihime said he was amazing and that he should herd cows, he said he hoped to live up to her expectations. Did she ever tell him what she was going to be? Was it a princess? She had entertained hopes of being an astronaut but that was much later, third year primary. On the day she discovered that she had the same name as the girl in the Tanabata legend, what did she tell her brother?

S_o, amazing people should herd cows,_ Nii-chan had said. _Shouldn't you herd cows too?_

H_a ha, no no, Nii-chan. I want to eat cucumber cows, not herd real ones._

A strong wind, like the one that had blown Ulquiorra's ashes far away, was lifting Orihime's hair across her face. Ishida-kun had fallen silent, as if he was waiting for a cue from Orihime for what to do next.

T_hen what will an amazing girl like you do?_

B_e amazing of course!_

There was a roar of battling reiatsu below the dome. Orihime knew that her place was not to keep out of the way this time._ Nii-chan, I must live up to my own expectations._ She squinted against the wind and saw tiny stars beneath her eyelids and felt the excitement of tiny stars flashing in her heart.

E_nd_

A_/N: Thank you __**Neha**__ for the beta. Thanks to many others for moral support (you know who you are!). I'd originally wanted to enter this fic in a Tanabata contest where the rules precisely state "You don't have to be an IchiHime fan to enter!" but in these paranoid shipping days, I wasn't sure how an entry from me, a yaoi multi-shipper and diehard IshiHime and occasional UlquiHime shipper, would go over. In any event, I'd always wanted to explore further Orihime's canon feelings for Ichigo, and this fic was in my head before the announcement for this year's contest. The contest did inspire the fic, though. The contest info for those who may want to enter is here: _

_.com/ichi__

_I didn't think I could wait two months to post an entry, and it's my hope that even though Sensei is taking his sweet time getting back to the dome, my ending for this story will be obsolete fanon by the time Tanabata 2010 rolls around. Ah, one can hope._


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